One of the things that has puzzled me a lot recently about the Luigi video is the amount of yeast used by Luigi to make his dough, especially in relation to the type of fermentation used by Luigi as discussed, but not in great detail, in the video. Initially, I came to the conclusion that the amount of yeast was very small. I came to that conclusion from the video at 1:00, where a small amount of yeast, maybe a tablespoon, is shown in a small bowl. The notion of using a small amount of yeast in a commercial pizza operation did not initially seem to make a lot of sense to me, but based on Gene's suggestion that keeping the dough near the oven might be material, I felt that I could make out a case for a long room temperature fermentation of many hours if the dough balls were held in a warm place. I had done this on several occasions in my home environment and while that approach might not be a common one, I could see the potential for such a method to work in a commercial environment.
In order to explore the possibility of the Luigi dough balls being warmed by the heat outside of the oven, I PMd a couple of our members who work professionally with deck ovens and asked what a typical temperature would be outside of the oven to the side. In the course of one such exchange, I was told that my estimate of the amount of yeast was far off, based on what the video shows at 1:09 where the yeast is actually added to the mixer bowl. I could see that there was more than about a tablespoon of yeast, but I couldn't tell at that point why my estimate was off. This prompted me to go back to 1:00 in the video to see if there was anything there to explain why my estimate was off, and by so much. It was then that it hit me that there is a second small bowl on the table near the mixer, in front of the bowl of yeast that I had originally studied. However, the second bowl is partially obscured by what appears to be the water container. I had initially seen the second bowl but thought that it was one of the bowls that held the salt. I now believe that the obscured bowl also contains yeast--maybe almost enough to fill that bowl. That would raise the total amount of yeast from the two yeast bowls to a level that would allow the dough to be fermented at room temperature for a reasonably short period before using, much like an emergency dough but perhaps with a somewhat longer fermentation period. That notion also seems to square with the exchange that Guy had with Luigi as to when the dough balls could be used to make pizzas (for the exchange, see the last paragraph of Reply 16 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,14928.msg150322.html#msg150322). I estimate that maybe 0.70-0.80% ADY might be a good starting point.
Although I think that Luigi does use room temperature fermentation, I think that I can also make out a case of cold fermentation using the larger amount of yeast but being limited to perhaps one day of cold fermentation. Such a dough might even be better than one fermented for only a few hours at room temperature. It would be easy enough for someone to try both approaches to see which might be the one used by Luigi and also to determine whether one method is materially better than the other. I might also add that I estimated the amount of salt used in Luigi's dough, based on a flour weight of 25 pounds (400 ounces), to be around 1.50-1.60%. To come up with this number, I assumed two small bowls of salt, as previously discussed, and I used a bowl with a similar size and shape to the bowls shown in the video to do some salt weighings. As previously noted, both scott123 and I felt that the hydration of Luigi's dough, using the Pendleton Power flour, to be around 65%. For the sugar, which Luigi says he adds to help get the yeast going, I would use something like 0.15% to start. For a thickness factor, I would use 18/(3.14159 x 9 x 9) = 0.0707 if one is interested in making a different size pizza than the 18" pizzas made by Luigi.
Peter